Speed Devils Online Racing Hands-On

While not exactly a sequel, the follow-up to Ubi Soft's popular Dreamcast racer is Speed Devils Online Racing. As the name suggests, the new game is based around online play, and unlike other Dreamcast games with an online element, it isn't much of a game without an Internet connection.

The game has two basic modes: playing online or offline. Playing offline is essentially a practice mode, as you simply select your car and track and then race. Playing online is where the real meat of the game is. Once you connect, you start a new account on the game's private servers. GameLoft, a network of servers primarily located in the UK, is currently handling all the game's networking and file-storage needs. Once you've set up your new account, you actually start a career. You're given ten grand to spend on your new car, and you have to work your way up the racing ranks by competing against other players online. You'll gain both experience and money as you complete races, and while you can't spend your experience points, you can spend the money you've earned on repairing or upgrading your current vehicle or on a new car altogether.

As a new racer there are only two cars you can purchase - neither of which is particularly good. After you've purchased your car, you move to the race mode, which features an online interface similar any other online game. There are several different lobbies, each of which can have any number of games running in it at any time. After you've joined a lobby, you can join an individual game, start your own game, or just sit back and chat. There are three basic race types. The standard race awards you a cash purse, depending on how well rated your opponents are, and gives you cash bonuses for completing certain objectives. The trial mode requires all the players to wager a predetermined amount of cash that is then awarded to the race winner. And the vendetta mode lets you race another player for pink slips - the loser forfeits his car to the winner. By winning money and other players' vehicles, you can buy all sorts of cool upgrades and make your racing experience that much better.

Each online race supports up to five players. And though I was playing against game testers in Paris, the lag was surprisingly light. The race took a bit to synch with all the other online players, but once the race actually started, everything ran extremely fast. The frame rate was fast, the controls were responsive, and there wasn't one dropped connection after hours of playing the game online. Hopefully the game will play this way when there are more than 20 or 30 players online.

While the physics engine hasn't changed much, the graphics and sound have received some major tweaking. The graphics engine now looks a lot better, with enhanced textures and visual effects. There is almost no pop-up, and the game simply flies along. The new cars have new sound effects, and the game's soundtrack has benefited from a few additional tracks.

Speed Devils Online Racing is a much-enhanced version of Speed Devils that, while not a full-fledged sequel, has enough gameplay changes to make the game worthwhile to those who haven't played the original game to death. While the purely online nature of the game may dissuade those who don't plan on spending large amounts of time online with their Dreamcast, from what we've seen so far, Speed Devils Online Racing looks like it will be an excellent online racer.